Conjugating verbs in French means to change the ending based on the verb’s subject, tense or mood\u2014and learning how to do this is a cornerstone of speaking French.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this post, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of French verb conjugation to help kickstart your fluency.<\/p>\n
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Conjugation means to change a verb in a way that reflects different meanings\u2014either in terms of its subject, tense or mood.<\/p>\n
The usual way of conjugating verbs in French is to remove the ending of the infinitive form<\/a> and add a new ending.<\/strong><\/p>\n The endings are determined by:<\/p>\n The pattern for how conjugation works depends on the specific verb ending<\/strong>, though it can vary with irregular verbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n We’ll cover these verb endings in the next section before moving on to conjugation rules for different tenses and moods.<\/p>\n In their infinitive form<\/a>, French verbs fall into three categories based on their endings:<\/p>\n Group one:<\/strong> Verbs ending in -er<\/em><\/p>\n Group two:<\/strong> Verbs ending in -ir<\/em><\/p>\n Group three:<\/strong> All other verbs (verbs that don’t end in -er <\/em>or -ir<\/em>, irregular verbs, and verbs which actually do end in -ir<\/em> but have a present participle that doesn’t end in -issant<\/em>)<\/p>\n Each of these verb categories has its own conjugation rules, which you’ll see later in the post.<\/p>\n Verbs that have the -er<\/em> ending (group one) are by far the most useful regular verbs in the French language\u2014that is because some 90% of all French verbs have this ending!<\/strong> So, if you master this group of verbs and the associated tenses, you should be well on your way to French verb mastery.<\/p>\n First, let’s focus on the present tense. Just like in English, the French present tense is used to describe actions that are currently happening, actions that happen repeatedly or general truths<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In the present tense, each French verb has two parts: a pronoun, and a conjugated verb.<\/p>\n The French pronouns are as follows:<\/p>\n Note that the pronoun on<\/em><\/strong> can be used to mean “we” for speaking generally or in the passive voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let’s look at examples of conjugation of regular verbs for each verb type, putting together the pronoun and its matching conjugation. I’ve gone ahead and underlined the verb endings: these are the same ending used for all regular verbs.<\/p>\n We’ll take a look at the -er<\/em> verb cacher <\/em>(to hide), the -ir<\/em> verb<\/a> finir<\/em> (to finish) and the -re<\/em> verb<\/a> (from the third group) prendre<\/em> (to take).<\/p>\n Their conjugation in present tense<\/a> is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n
Three French Verb Types<\/h2>\n
Present Tense French Conjugation<\/h2>\n
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